


Mark

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24607972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Klinger doesn't think Major Winchester knows anything about him.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Mark

“Major, I can count the things you know about me on one hand.” He held up a finger for each. “I’m Lebanese.” _Which you look down on_ , he didn’t add. “I’m from Toledo. I wear dresses to get out of the army. I’m the company clerk and I’m lousy at it.”

Charles didn’t react. “Respectfully, Klinger, you’re wrong. May I have an opportunity to expand your list?”

“Sure, I guess.” What he could not guess was why the Major wanted such an opportunity, but at the 4077th, Charles was a breed apart.

“Splendid. It is my understanding that Major Houlihan has you inventorying the supply tent this weekend. Would you object to continuing our discussion then?”

“How did you know that?”

Charles did not wink. Perhaps Winchesters did not condescend to make such gestures? But his eyes glittered with what Klinger suspiciously suspected was mirth. “I told you I know more than you think.”

As he departed, the Corporal was grateful he hadn’t made any kind of a bet based on what Charles did or didn’t know.

***

When Klinger arrived at the supply tent on Saturday after chow, Winchester was already there with a clipboard. He still wore his white coat.

“You’re _helping_!?” Klinger burst out.

“Why not? It will go faster.”

Maybe, but he’d never known a Major to give up an evening to help an enlisted man count sodium tablets, IV tubing, rolls of bandages, and brown glass bottles of rubbing alcohol.

Charles noted his companion’s stiffness but acted as though it didn’t touch him. His fingers moved efficiently over the rows; his penmanship was precise - even pretty for a doctor, a profession too often given to scrawling directions on prescription pads.

Finally, Klinger couldn’t stand it anymore. “You said something about proving me wrong. Are you waiting for an invitation?”

Those eyes - almost violet in the low light of the tent - gave away nothing. “Are you extending one?”

“Sure. Take your best shot, Major.”

From Hunnicutt or Pierce, Klinger would likely have received a joke about hypodermics and the danger of saying “shot” around a doctor. Charles just straightened, drawing on some inner well of strength, and said, “I know that seeing wounded men terrifies you almost to the point of immobility, but that you have never allowed yourself to pass out or throw up.”

Klinger spun to face him, pen dripping an arc of ink across the inventory sheets.

“I know that when it’s especially difficult to bear, you wear your red and blue cloak regardless of the heat and the way it soaks your back with sweat. I know that you love the smell of roses. I know that your favorite job was in a delicatessen and that when you buy new fabrics for your creations you choose them not based on color, but on the way they feel beneath your hands.”

The clipboard slipped from the corporal’s grip, but the speaker didn’t seem to notice.

“I know that you get apples from West Virginia for the Colonel’s horse and that setting up the trade was difficult and costly. I know that when it storms you get headaches that are nearly blinding and that you hide them by smiling and doing your work, even though each keystroke of your typewriter hurts when it strikes home. I know that you prefer tea with honey in it to either coffee or alcohol. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that you grew up with sisters or female cousins and protected them.”

Klinger sat without looking on a pile of blankets and sheets. Major Houlihan would be furious, of course; she purposely had supplies organized to prevent leaning while working, never mind sitting. His voice was very thin, very small. “ _How_?”

“I pay attention.” _I mark the way you hold your head, the quality of light in your lovely, dark eyes_. He knelt beside him. “Would you care to hear what I do not know?”

Klinger waved his hand in an expansive gesture. To his mind, Charles had pretty much earned the right to say whatever he wanted to at this point. His mind churned with fragments of the Major’s speech: _apples... pain, sweat... roses... honey...how velvet feels..._ **_no one_ ** _knows about those headaches. No one is supposed to, anyway_.

Charles looked up at him. Klinger noticed how white his long fingers were as they gripped the clipboard, how small it looked in his hands. “I do not know if your brow would smooth under the touch of my lips. I do not know if, when you wear your blue and red cloak to the theater, you would permit me to hold your hand beneath its folds. I do not know if I could shield you from this place by holding you in my arms. I know only that I would be most honored to try.”

Skin cold and pale with shock, Klinger just stared at him. As if hearing - or knowing - something the Corporal was unaware of himself, the physician nodded. He sat the clipboard aside and stood. As he lifted the tent flap to go, he said, “At least see Pierce for a prescription for the headaches. He won’t tell anyone if you ask him not to.”

***

A few days later, Charles looked up from his newspaper (an entire week’s worth at a time came from Boston) to find Corporal Klinger on the other side of the mesh. Their eyes met through the flimsy, porous material.

Klinger spoke softly; he didn’t want to share his feelings with the whole camp. “I wasn’t going to come here until I could try to live up to your speech,” he confessed. “But I spent the whole night looking up shades of blue and purple and grey and the truth is, I don’t have a clue what color your eyes are, but I like it when you look at me.”

Charles’s face gentled on the other side of the mesh. It made Klinger brave enough to go on. “I feel better when you’re around, Major, safer. You can one hundred percent hold my hand anytime you want to. The next time my head hurts I’d like to let you try to kiss it away. Is there anything else you need to know before I come in there?”

“That will do, Corporal.” 

Klinger entered with a smile. “My title’s never sounded good before, Major.” 

Charles pulled him down and kissed him. “Learned that trick from you. But I daresay you’ve earned the right to call me by my name at this point.” 

“I’ll remember that,” Klinger promised. “Not to sound like a kid whose parents are out of town, but where are the Captains?” 

“When will they be back, you mean? As shy as all that, Corporal?”

“ _I’m_ not,” Klinger corrected. “But I thought you might want to, uh…”

“Keep you a secret?”

“Something like that.”

Winchester shook his head, wearing a soft and certain smile on his lips. “No. I have no plans of announcing it over the PA system, mind, but, I’m scarcely afraid to be seen with you.”

Klinger translated that favorably as _If I so wish, I will touch you in public because you are mine to touch._

“But since this is new, if you would prefer an ‘undercover’ approach?” He indicated his empty bunk with a tilt of his head and saw Klinger’s eyes light up. 

They moved toward this new locale, Winchester taking a spot closest to the wall so that his body became a shelter for Klinger who climbed in after him. Winchester then surprised his beloved new acquisition by attaching one of the ugly, bown army blankets to a hook above the bed, creating a sort of tent. Klinger looked around the space he had created; little light came in from the lanterns but Winchester’s smile had a soft glow to it. 

“Will this serve?” he asked his visitor. 

“Yeah. You’re full of surprises, you know?” Then he corrected himself. “ _This_ is really how you are, huh? You just don’t share it with everybody.” 

“It is how I really am with you because I care for you. As a rule, I am not the most demonstrative person, but you have made my hands ache with wanting to touch you.”

Klinger reached for one of those hands and drew it to his mouth to kiss the center of his palm. “Why’d you wait so long to say?”

Feeling Klinger’s warm breath on his fingers made the lonely surgeon feel at peace for the first time since he’d come to Asia. “Two reasons. But I will gladly make up more if you will continue doing that.”

Klinger smiled and resumed his exploration by mouth. 

“To begin, I wanted to be quite certain of my feelings. I am not given to dalliances. Given what I know of your romantic past, you aren’t either.”

Klinger nodded his agreement. Speaking would have involved leaving off the tiny kisses he was devotedly distributing. 

“And then, you will be pleased to hear, I got rather… caught up in watching you.” He placed his hands at Klinger’s hips and traced up his sides, stroking his neck. “You are entirely too beautiful to go walking around in the world alone and I cannot explain how you’ve come so far in a single state except to say that many people are fools.” 

Klinger sighed and brightened at the words; it seemed that something else that Charles had learned during his observations was how praise affected him; given kind words (provided they were sincere) Klinger would do almost anything for the one who spoke them. “Beautiful?” he murmured without meaning to. 

“Yes. Though you are equally capable of ‘handsome,’ when you wish it. I would have told you as much every day, but I do not think you would have believed me, thinking, as you did, that I knew so terribly little of you.” 

“If you sounded like that I would have. You don’t mind the dresses and stuff, Major?”

“I fell for _you_ , darling. I not only do not mind your forays into fashion, I look forward to them and replay them in my mind when I cannot sleep.”

Klinger hid his face in the hollow of his neck, overcome. This was too much of a good thing. “Next time you can’t sleep, tell me what you want to see and I’ll dress up for you. I might not be high society, Major, but I can dress for it.” 

“I only wish you to be _my_ society.” His arm came around his waist. “Though if you allow requests, that sunflower dress had me dropping my instruments in OR - even after you’d covered up.” 

The sunflower descriptor told Klinger that his newfound one and only continued to be observant; the dark brown lining that peeked out _was_ the exact same shade as the center of a sunflower. “Anything for you.” 

And then, because he felt that Charles deserved it, Klinger tangled them together and did his best to find the words for all the wonderful qualities _he_ had observed in him. A gentle blush crept up the surgeon’s neck to stain his cheeks and he tried to kiss Klinger quiet, but he was no match for that determined mouth. So, Charles learned about the lesser known effects of his accent, was praised for his kind heart (though he tended to perform acts of kindness quietly, without drawing attention to himself), his clever mind, his lovely, talented hands. 

“You should be used to this,” Klinger teased when Charles evinced a marked bashfulness to these compliments. “Someone should have been saying this to you all along.” 

He kissed his dark hair. “Honoria has always supported me, though she likes to end her compliments by calling me an idiot.”

“I’m going to like her,” Klinger predicted. 

“She already loves you. I’ve written, but if we can call I will introduce the two of you.”

Until then, Klinger quietly promised that he would continue to remind Charles how special he was. “Thanks for seeing me, Charles.” 

“Maxwell, I would have ‘seen’ you even if I was blind. You are every bit that special and every bit that _bright_ . That you could ever imagine that you escaped my notice is a crime.” He smiled then at a memory. “Although observing you _without_ your knowledge has been my favorite part of this horror show. Do you have any idea what happens to your eyes when you laugh? You _shine_ , my pretty one, and that you would permit me to take that shining into my life is more privilege than you know.” 

“I’m never going to outclass you when it comes to words,” Klinger joked. “I didn’t know all that back and forth we were doing was _practice_!” That back and forth had been playful insults rather than pretty phrases, but he’d held his own against that Ivy League vocabulary. 

“You don’t _need_ the words, Maxwell. Don’t you realize that having you in my arms renders me quite helpless?”

The slighter man trembled. “Do you know what it does to me when you say stuff like that?” 

“Of course. I told you, I pay attention.” 

Klinger sighed and snuggled against him before leaning up to kiss the corners of the eyes that had fastened on him and taken him in. The love in that gaze stunned him; how had he not seen it before? As Charles joined their mouths, he promised himself that he would devote the same care and attention to the man in his arms as he did to his stitches and sequins. The former, he had a sneaking suspicion, was going to be a hell of a lot more fun! 

End! 


End file.
